{"id":112620,"date":"2021-03-14T16:58:43","date_gmt":"2021-03-14T23:58:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=112620"},"modified":"2021-03-14T16:58:43","modified_gmt":"2021-03-14T23:58:43","slug":"the-general-election-of-1956-part-3c","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2021\/03\/14\/the-general-election-of-1956-part-3c\/","title":{"rendered":"THE GENERAL ELECTION OF 1956 Part 3C"},"content":{"rendered":"

KAMALIKA PIERIS<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

This\nessay concludes the  selective  list of improvements made by the 1956 government.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  • MEP government brought in\nthe Suspension of the<\/strong> Capital Punishment Act<\/strong> No 20 of 1958,\nwhich suspended the death penalty from May 1958. <\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n
    • Voting age<\/strong> at general election was\nbrought down to 18 years from 21 years.\nElections Amendment Act No, 11 of\n1959. <\/strong><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n
      • May\nDay<\/strong> was declared a holiday in Sri Lanka in 1956 for the Government\nsector, bank and mercantile sectors. <\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n
        • A brand new Department of Ayurveda<\/strong> was set up in 1956. <\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n
          • A National Planning Council<\/strong> was formed it. This was a first for the\ncountry. This Council brought out Ceylon\u2019s first Ten Year Plan for 1959-68. This\nPlan was prepared after consultation with economists such as Joan\nRobinson, Nicholas Kaldor, John Kenneth Galbraith, and Gunnar Myrdal.  It was a\ncomprehensive and systematic plan covering both public and private sectors,\nunlike earlier plans which covered only the public sector. It extended beyond\nthe usual five years. To implement the ten year plan Sri Lanka needed\n150 million annually, this was not forthcoming as Sri Lanka had already\nobtained monies from countries. <\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n
            • A conscious effort was\nmade towards industrializatio<\/strong>n in\n1956. Corporations were established under State Industrial Corporations Act\n1957, as well as special legislation. These corporations were provided with\nstartup capital in form of grants and loans, confirmed economist Saman\nKelegama.  This was the first time, since\nWorld War II that local industries were started.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n
              • All cargo handling operations in the Port of Colombo<\/strong> were nationalized in\n1958. and the   Port (Cargo)\nCorporation  set up by Act No. 13 of 1958<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n
                • Walawe Ganga Irrigation Development Scheme<\/strong> was inaugurated in 1st October 1957.  It would Irrigate 51,000 acres year, provide\nwater for 15,000 acres of existing paddy fields and 23,000 families were to be\nsettled on it. <\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n
                  • A\nMinistry of Cultural affairs<\/strong> was established for the first time on 12.04.1956 in accordance with the Throne Speech\nmade by the MEP government when it came into power in 1956. It was established\nto formulate and implement a national cultural policy to regenerate the\nindigenous cultural tradition which had been suppressed for so long, under\ncolonial rule.  Ananda Guruge recalled\nthat Bandaranaike had discussed with him, about setting up a Ministry of\nCultural affairs and a Department of Cultural affairs. The first\never in Sri Lanka. <\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n
                    • the Sinhala film makers\nhad to go to India to get their films processed.  Sinhala film production in Madras was banned\nin 1957  .A   film and recording studio with machines for automatic processing named Ceylon Studios<\/strong>  was set up In Kirula Rd, Colombo for\nmaking  films.\nThis was  very welcome.  ( continued)<\/li><\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

                      KAMALIKA PIERIS This essay concludes the  selective  list of improvements made by the 1956 government. MEP government brought in the Suspension of the Capital Punishment Act No 20 of 1958, which suspended the death penalty from May 1958. Voting age at general election was brought down to 18 years from 21 years. Elections Amendment Act […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-112620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kamalika-pieris"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=112620"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112620\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=112620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=112620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=112620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}